With the passage of California’s Proposition 64 in November, recreational use of marijuana in the state is now legal. So does that mean new pot-growing farms, which often use power-hungry lights and cooling systems inside sprawling warehouses, will start plugging into the power grid and boost electricity use all over the state?

A funny thing happened on the way to creating a more resilient grid in the United States. Rather than promoting technologies that actually do this – like microgrids – the Department of Energy (DOE) is pushing old-style generators that are part of the problem.

When Colorado legalized recreational marijuana no one would have guessed that it would end up as a gateway to experimenting with light bulbs. Plasma lights, induction lights, LED, fluorescent — you name it, Colorado Harvest Company has probably tried it.

Forward-thinking companies are pushing the cannabis industry to employ a variety of techniques and technologies to reduce energy consumption, cut down operating expenses and be more environmentally friendly

In February, the Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE) and Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) released the fifth annual Sustainable Energy in America Factbook (awesome/free, available here). Subsequently, one of the most publicized snippets of the report became this: “In 2016, consumers devoted less than 4% of their total annual household spending to energy, the smallest share […]